Regardless of the country's intention, these accusations are
real, and if true, they are a threat to the integrity of our
media and our democracy. However, to anyone paying attention to
how aggressively the Russian government has tried to shape media
around the world for the last decade, they are not surprising.

In fact, the Kremlin has built an ideological foundation and
media infrastructure around what it has come to consider a global
media war.

Spreading Russian influence

In 2005 the Russian government launched TV network RT, or Russia Today. The
Kremlin-backed news channel is now available all around the world
in English, Spanish, Arabic, and German. It exists to advance the
agenda of the Russian government and expand its influence across
the globe.

Part of that agenda is discrediting the US system in order to
show people that it's no better than Russia's, an idea that's
filtered down to the alt-right — who call Russia a
"model civilization" — and seems apparent in the world views
of Breitbart's Steve Bannon and conspiracy theory jockeys like
Alex Jones.

Russia isn't shy about countering US (or global) media. In
interviews with RT reporters and editors, I've been told that in
2008 — after President George W. Bush voiced his concern over
Russia's incursion into Georgia — the channel's mandate changed
from inviting people to enjoy Russian culture, to showing the
world that the United States is not a shining city on a hill, as
President Reagan described it in the 1980s.

The Kremlin believes it's justified in spreading
misinformation all over the world — especially in the US —
because it's actually a tit-for-tat.

The country considers RT a counter to media outlets the US set up
all over the world during the Cold War, like Radio Free Europe
and Radio Free Liberty. The Russians blamed those outlets for
inspiring dissidents in Eastern Europe to rise up against
late-Cold War Soviet-backed governments.

The US outlets are run by a federal agency called the
Broadcasting Board of Governors, but have been left largely
ignored since the end of the Cold War. Their work was put on a
political back burner, so to speak.

But Russia did not forget, especially not a Russia helmed by
former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

A
producer of Ukraine Today accused the Russian government and
media of lying about Russia's incursion into the country. It was
news, to say the least.YouTube/RT

A conspiracy to spread conspiracies

For years I've spent time in and out of Columbia
University's School of Journalism as a student and as an adjunct
professor investigating and/or teaching about Russia
Today and outlets like it, including Sputnik. Ultimately I've come to
understand that the Kremlin thinks that spreading its messaging
is morally equivalent to the US exporting the value of a
free press.

Russia's aim is to spread chaos to appear strong in
contrast to its geopolitical foes. It does this through a mix of
pointing out legitimate issues with the American government and
the country's society, by printing outright lies and promoting
conspiracy theories, and by spreading a million half-truths about
what's going on — so many half-truths, that people lose faith in
who and what to believe.

You may recognize some of these tactics in our current
media landscape.

The Kremlin has been using the same strategy to confuse its
own people, according to Peter Pomerantsev, a former Russian
television producer who testified before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee last year.

"In order to woo viewers the Kremlin has utterly blurred
the lines between fact and fiction. Kremlin ‘current affairs’
programs are filled with spectacular scare-stories about Russian
children crucified by Ukrainian militias or US conspiracies to
ethnically cleanse East Ukraine. In a context where no one
‘believes’ any media, all that matters is that the ‘news’ is
sensationalist and cinematic," Pomerantsev told the Senate
Foreign Affairs Committee in November 2015.

This is why fake news is such an important piece, and
distinctly Russian feature, of this game. Crazy conspiracy
theories like pizza-gate, the story that Democratic leaders run a
child sex ring out of a DC Pizza shop, are just the thing to stir
passions and create distrust among the credulous. They're meant
to weaken trust in institutions and generate a sense of enmity
between parties and people, all while sowing doubt about the
boundary between real and fake news.

Donald Trump and his associates only advance the Kremlin's
cause when they spread these stories, or even just when they
describe the
US system as being "rigged."

The Troll War

This media war also involves using social media to counter
US influence all over the world. For years analysts have tried to
track the activity of pro-Russian internet trolls, and not just
in the US. Last August, pro-Russia trolls started spreading false
news stories all over Sweden, while that country was
considering signing a deal with NATO, Russia's greatest
foe.

Officials told
the New York Times that Swedish people all over the country
"got scared" because they were not used to seeing such blatant
untruth all over social media. European and American intelligence
experts traced the vitriol back to Russia, and the aggression
only pushed Sweden closer to NATO.

This summer the New
York Times Magazine found that many Russian trolls,
headquartered in St. Petersburg, were posing as Donald Trump
supporters on the internet, creating fake conservative
accounts.

There are obvious reasons why Russia would prefer Trump to
Clinton, especially when it comes to this battle over media
consumption. The former Secretary of State spoke out against
Russia's aggression in this space as early as 2010, saying the US
was losing the "information war"
around the world.

Russia, you see, had created a media army and it has never
been afraid to use it.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Insider.